Follow The White Rabbit

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Part 35

From Royalty to Rags

The Priest Sharmara was able to bundle both his wife and The Queen safely into one of the many Priest holes he had access to throughout the palace… By doing so, Sharmara sadly sacrificed his life to give the ladies time to flee. He was slaughtered, refusing to assist, standing definant they ran him through and his body thrown from the window.

Hera and The Queen stifled their shock for fear of being discovered, huddled silently until the troops had finished wrecking The Priests quarters before carefully making their way deeper into the Priest hole to passage ways between rooms, built into walls…

“I can’t leave.” The Queen whispered urgently, “I need to go back.” There was no fear in her voice. Hera blinked, shook her head… “I’ve seen people like this before, they will murder everyone to get to me and my family.”

“Even if you turn yourself in your majesty, there is no guarantee they will not kill everyone anyway…” Hera replied, tears cutting through the dust on her face.

“This is the revolution we needed, the rebellion we wanted, but we were too afraid to act, we hesitated when the child died, we did not know how best to end my husbands reign. This land needs to survive, my people need to survive and that could never happen with The King destroying more than he protected. I have hated him for so long, yet I also feared him… ”

Hera could not disagree, yet both women found themselves on the opposite side of the very troops they would have preferred to have supported.

“Drop your illusion Hera, return to your woods, the forests you love. The people will need a wise woman in the times to come and find the buried stone, free her from the soured well, guard her, use her magic to help the land recover from all this, this, bloodshed…”

Removing the locket from around her neck, The Queen handed the Witch the Royal Seal… “May it serve you well one day Hera.” She squeezed the locket into her hands and turned to face her fate…

Hera refused to watch her leave… she reversed the spell upon her own appearance, returning once again to an old hag, as such she could pass anyone, allies or foe… Though the line betwixt the two was desperately blurred… no one stopped the twisted women, leaning on a cane through cobbled streets running with fear and jubilation. She hid away the seal and hobbled away towards the well, leaving The Queen to certain death…